If youâre spending lots of quality time with your family or friends over the holiday season, you might be itching to play some board games but not sure which ones will go down well. Maybe youâve tried getting your parents into Catan before and they were completely uninterested. Or youâre thinking - how would grandma fare taking control of a vast interstellar civilisation in Eclipse? Will the kids like Carcassonne?!
The Game Shelf is here to help. With our top 5 games that will bring even the most sceptical and game-averse family member or friend to the table, and guarantee fun.
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#5 - Sheriff of Nottingham
Coming in at number 5, itâs the cheeky game of âsneak in some contrabandâ - Sheriff of Nottingham. If your loved ones are not the type that would enjoy a deception game, move on to the next game now. But if a bit of sneakiness sounds appealing, this game offers such a good time in a very simple and easy to teach package.
In Sheriff of Nottingham, players take turns either being the Sheriff, or the Traders bringing goods into the town market. As a Trader, you choose goods from your hand of cards to place into a pouch. If you want to risk being caught, you can sneak in some juicy contraband for extra points. The pouch locks with a very satisfying click of a button, then itâs over to the Sheriff. This is where the fun begins.
The Sheriff can take their time interrogating each Trader. The game is pretty free-form at this point. Negotiations can go for a few seconds, or many minutes. Traders can profess their innocence, or can try to bribe the Sheriff to get their goods through. If the Sheriff opens a pouch by unclicking that button, then itâs ON. If the Trader was truthful, the Sheriff pays the Trader a penalty fee for each good. But if the Sheriff correctly catches the Trader in a lie, the Trader coughs up a penalty fee to the Sheriff for each good they lied about.
This is a great casual party game - easy to teach, plays with 3 to 5 players, and is guaranteed to generate tension, laughs, and an all-round good time. As long as your group doesnât mind a bit of cheeky lying and negotiating!
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#4 - Azul
Letâs say youâre playing with a more sedate crowd. Perhaps they like to think through puzzles a little more. Maybe they have a bit more of an aesthetic eye. In that case, Azul is a wonderful option to bring to the table. When Azul was released in 2017 it became an instant classic, and shot to the top 100 in Board Game Geek rankings.Â
Azul is an abstract tile-laying game. The tiles are beautifully designed, with gorgeous artwork and a satisfying, tactile âclick-clackâ feel when you run them through your fingers. The rules are simple - each player picks a set of tiles from the âfactory floorâ and adds them to their board. From here, you can arrange tiles to form patterns, with the constraint that the same type of tile cannot be in the same column or row more than once.
Points are awarded based on tiles being adjacent in rows or columns, and for certain combos, such as completing a row or column. This is a game that is only lightly competitive - yes, you want to have the most points, but itâs not a cutthroat or deceptive game, and the most annoyed you will be is if someone takes a set of tiles that you had your eye on.
Pick Azul if you want to ease your group into board games with a visually arresting, enjoyable and competitive puzzle that doesnât overstay its welcome.
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#3 - Pictomania
Number 3 puts a new spin on an old classic. If your loved ones have ever played Pictionary, then Pictomania will feel immediately familiar.Â
In Pictomania, rather than splitting into teams, you play individually, but the twist is that you are all drawing and guessing together, all at once! The beauty is that the game plays so much more quickly and enjoyably than Pictionary, which can drag on and have lots of downtime if your team doesnât control the dice, or if youâre waiting for your turn to draw.
The way it works is that you all look at 3 cards each with a list of words. You get some secret coordinates that tell you which word is yours to draw. Then you all start drawing simultaneously. When you finish drawing, you put your pencil down and start guessing all the other playerâs drawings in secret by placing a card face down with the number coordinate representing your guess. Once everyone is done, you dole out points for correct guesses (plus some bonuses) then go onto the next round.
This is a breezy, fun take on an old classic, cleverly designed by one of the masters of the industry - Vlaada Chvatil. He went on to design another even more popular party game - Codenames, which didnât make it onto this list but is another well-known classic. But if you ask me, Codenames can be a little too intense and sometimes run overly long. Pictomania is fast and fun, every time.
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#2 - Camel Up!
Next up is a game that is an absolute joy to play every time, as 3 to 8 players bet on a crazy camel race and pray that they can accurately predict the outcome. In Camel Up! your goal is to have the most money by the end of the race, which plays out over a series of legs. In each leg you roll dice to move the camels. Some camels will move a little, others quite a lot, and some may not move at all.
The genius twist on this mechanic is that camels âstackâ on top of each other when they occupy the same space. This means that if you roll a die that would make you move a camel on the bottom of a stack, the whole stack moves with it! Add to this a couple of âcrazyâ camels that move in the opposite direction (with potential to pick up some racing camels on their travels) and you have all the ingredients for a chaotic and hilarious experience.
Players have lots of betting options - you can bet on an overall winner & loser, but you can also bet on a winner for each specific leg of the race. The trade-off is that the earlier you bet, the more money you can make, but if your bet is wrong, you will lose money. This makes for a really exciting tension where you are waiting for just enough information to make a confident bet, while trying to stay ahead of your opponents.
The only downside to this game, besides the randomness which Iâm sure will frustrate some players, is that the core mechanic can be considered gambling. Personally, I think this game teaches a valuable lesson about probabilities and when to pull the trigger on a decision when you have limited information and a hard-to-predict outcome. And honestly, itâs too entertaining to pass up. Thank me when your entire group is screaming at a dice roll, camels are moving in crazy directions and everyone ends up having an absolute blast.
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#1 - Sushi Go Party!
Perhaps this is no surprise to seasoned gamers, but if you want a game that is guaranteed to be fast, fun and accessible for everyone to play, then you really canât go past Sushi Go Party! Designed by the legendary Phil Walker-Harding, 2 to 8 players are drafting sushi-themed cards to create sets and score points. You start with a large hand of cards, and each turn everyone picks a card to keep, plays it simultaneously, then passes remaining cards to the player on their left. The round ends when all cards have been played, then you score the points. Itâs that simple!
You might already know about Sushi Go!, but if that was just the appetiser, then Sushi Go Party! is the full degustation. The main difference is that Sushi Go Party! includes a lot more cards and allows you to create your own âmenuâ with each game where you can switch up the types of foods you include to make things more interesting. You might optimise foods around high scoring combos, or perhaps you want to have a less cutthroat game. Itâs really up to you how you design each game, and the rule book comes with some handy pre-made âmenusâ to get you started.
In this way, Sushi Go Party! is a little like Dominion (you choose which sets of cards to play with) and 7 Wonders (drafting a card each turn) wrapped up in a tasty, easy to learn, fast paced package. And you canât talk about Sushi Go Party! without acknowledging the theme and the art. Part of what has made Sushi Go Party! so successful is the charming cartoon-like artwork. Every nigiri has its own charm and personality, as do the appetisers, rolls, and so on.Â
So if you are stumped during this holiday period for what to play and you need some inspiration, you canât go wrong with any of these five games. The hardest part is to decide whether you want to sneak contraband past a tough Sheriff, build a beautiful tile mosaic, draw silly things, bet on a crazy camel race or make some tasty sushi combos. Either way youâre guaranteed to have a great time with your loved ones.